1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method and apparatus for performing processing according to a type of rendering command. The invention also pertains to a program implementing the above-described image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Rendering data handled by a printer driver is largely divided into three data types, such as text, vector graphics, and raster images. Generally, among the three data types, raster images occupy the largest amount of data in a data stream which is transmitted from a basic operating system (OS) to a printer via a printer driver, thereby greatly influencing the performance of printing processing.
Accordingly, for decreasing the amount of data in raster images, the following techniques are employed to increase the performance of printing processing:
(1) executing half-tone processing in the printer driver and sending device-dependent binary raster images to the printer;
(2) performing data compression; and
(3) combining operations (1) and (2).
With any of the above-described techniques employed, the data size of raster images to be sent to the printer can be reduced.
According to the above-described technique (1), performance of printing processing can be increased. However, since final output images are created in the printer driver, it is difficult to perform intelligent image processing in the printer.